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Libertarians, by necessity, spend a lot of their time in the minutia of a given policy or idea. The burden of proof is on us to demonstrate why things can exist without government interventions, because it is such a foreign concept to the average person. This leads to a group of generally well-read supporters, which is great. It also leads, at times however, to a group that’s constantly entrenched in confrontation regarding their views. Cue Kokesh.

Adam Kokesh has been possibly the most prominent leader in driving home a very important point in the liberty movement; that you, as an individual, are a strong, capable, wonderful person.

Sure, taxation is theft and the wars in the Middle East and throughout the rest of the world are stupid and awful. No, the government has no role in dictating the “rules” of marriage contracts or what you can or cannot put into your own body. And you’re right when you assert that free markets are better for everyone.

But these are generally contentious issues, and they require a great deal of time and debate to flesh out the various points for your opponent. In the meantime, we can be making a YUGE impact on swaying them to our side through the way we carry ourselves and through empowering them as individuals.

This is something I’ve hardly mastered. Progressives that would call a now-dead Castro a pioneer for social progress or conservatives that want to rule the world with an iron fist make it really difficult.

The bottom line, though, is the only way we can lift the bridle of government control of virtually every aspect of our lives is through a collective rebuke of the system as it stands. The grand moment that we “heave-ho” DC off of our backs will only come when people are confident enough in themselves to fill the void that’s left.

The poor need to hear that public accommodation laws aren’t helping them. The young need to hear that they don’t need safe-spaces to withstand dissenting opinion. Progressives need to hear that a growing government will one day turn on them and conservatives need to hear that planting the seeds of democracy in the hole’s made by JDAMs doesn’t yield a thing.

Each and every one of them is fully capable of carving out their own destiny with just the traits they have and acquire, and no government in the history of the world can prioritize and guarantee their success better than they themselves.

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) is an American hero, a man born a slave who sought and achieved his own freedom – and lived to tell the story in writings and lectures.

But what strikes me most about his book My Bondage and My Freedom is the riveting story of what inspired his escape. His slavery was backed by the force of law, but he felt it most intensely as a practical matter when he gained his first taste of freedom.

His master had come to trust him enough to market his skills outside of the master’s direct control. He had become very good at caulking. At the age of twenty, he proposed to his master that he be permitted to work and remit a sizeable portion of his earnings to his owner. The master agreed.

Douglass tells the story of how he started to earn money. This gave him a sense of his value as a human being, same as anyone else. And with money came some element of volition. When his master took a sizeable portion of it, he knew it was wrong. This was money he had earned. It was his. No man had the right to take it from him.

Now, to be sure, Douglass was writing before the income tax. The whole idea of freedom was that no man could take from you what was yours. If you made it, you could keep it. Here was a practical application of what it meant not to be a slave. And Douglass knew it.

As Douglass explains:

The practice, from week to week, of openly robbing me of all my earnings, kept the nature and character of slavery constantly before me. I could be robbed by indirection, but this was too open and barefaced to be endured. I could see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my honest toil into the purse of any man.

The thought itself vexed me, and the manner in which Master Hugh received my wages, vexed me more than the original wrong. Carefully counting the money and rolling it out, dollar by dollar, he would look me in the face, as if he would search my heart as well as my pocket, and reproachfully ask me, ‘Is that all? — implying that I had, perhaps, kept back part of my wages; or, if not so, the demand was made, possibly, to make me feel, that, after all, I was an ‘unprofitable servant.’

Draining me of the last cent of my hard earnings, he would, however, occasionally—when I brought home an extra large sum—dole out to me a sixpence or a shilling, with a view, perhaps, of kindling up my gratitude; but this practice had the opposite effect — it was an admission of my right to the whole sum. The fact, that he gave me any part of my wages, was proof that he suspected that I had a right to the whole of them. I always felt uncomfortable, after having received anything in this way, for I feared that the giving me a few cents, might, possibly, ease his conscience, and make him feel himself a pretty honorable robber, after all!

It was this that led Douglass to plot his escape. He seethed ever more over having to give up his earnings or any portion of his earnings. Once he took a weekend off, and he was punished by his master. He retaliated by not working at all, which vexed his master more. Then he got clever and started paying more than was required, causing his master to trust him.

Master Hugh seemed to be very much pleased, for a time, with this arrangement; and well he might be, for it was decidedly in his favor. It relieved him of all anxiety concerning me. His money was sure. He had armed my love of liberty with a lash and a driver, far more efficient than any I had before known; and, while he derived all the benefits of slaveholding by the arrangement, without its evils, I endured all the evils of being a slave, and yet suffered all the care and anxiety of a responsible freeman.

“Nevertheless,” thought I, “it is a valuable privilege another step in my career toward freedom.” It was something even to be permitted to stagger under the disadvantages of liberty, and I was determined to hold on to the newly gained footing, by all proper industry. I was ready to work by night as well as by day; and being in the enjoyment of excellent health, I was able not only to meet my current expenses, but also to lay by a small sum at the end of each week….

It was this small sum that he saved that permitted him to buy a ticket on what was called the underground railroad, and eventually find his way to freedom.

Chattel slavery is a grave moral evil, on a level incomparable to bad tax policy. Nonetheless, commerce, in the life of Douglass, served as the inspiration and the means for obtaining freedom – and freedom from what? From his personal equivalent of the tax man who dared to take from his hands that which his own hands had earned.

The phrase “equal pay for equal work” is in play again, with an intended meaning we all know. The idea is that government should force (really force, this time) private employers to boost the pay of women to match the rate of men in the same positions.

Almost every state had laws that specifically limited when women could work.It’s a bad idea; more than that, the policy actually betrays the original meaning of the phrase, circa 1920; more about this in a bit.

Such a law, heavily enforced (after all, equal pay has been the law for half a century), would actually handicap women in the marketplace, taking away their ability to price compete. It would require an army of bureaucrats to enforce by overriding business control over wages and salaries. And because you can comply by either raising wages or by lowering the professional status of women, it would install a new glass ceiling for women, outpricing their labor in the market for professional advancement.

There is a mighty social cost too. It would do very cruel things to the reputation of all women of accomplishment. It would signal to the world that they only achieved through government power, the use of which is much like putting a gun to people’s heads. Anyone can do that. Nothing to brag about, nothing to feel proud about, nothing for which to take credit.

Maybe you detect a patronizing hint to the demand. It’s as if women can’t really cut it in the professional workforce. They can’t manage their own careers or make their own deals. They can’t cut it. They need the help of the state.

There’s more than a hint of misogyny here. And indeed, if you look at the history of labor legislation as it pertains to women, that is exactly what you find.

Feminists in those days were savvy: they saw exactly what was going on.In the early part of the 20th century, restrictions on women’s work and the regulatory imposition of lower wages were put in place for eugenic reasons. The life goal of women is not to make money but to further the race. Their place is not in the factory but in the home bearing and raising children. Hence, regulations should punish their commercial ambitions.

Feminists in those days were savvy: they saw exactly what was going on. They used the phrase “equal pay for equal work” to call for an end to these regulatory restrictions on women’s work. It was a clarion call not for government but to allow the market to work! It was: let the market be permitted to pay women equal to man, because the law wouldn’t allow it.

What kinds of laws? Almost every state had laws that specifically limited when women could work: not before 6am and not after 10pm. And there were maximum working hours too: not more than 50. (That might sound like more than a full-time job, but 100 years ago, this workload was seen as less than serious.)

Such laws were typical. Also, states and even the federal government offered payments to mothers not to work. It was the earliest form of what we call the welfare state, and the motivation was, again, certainly eugenic. How can the best women breed the best offspring if they are hanging around the factories instead of using their reproductive talents to lift the quality of the human population?

At the time, the women’s movement was dedicated to repealing this law. As the New York Timesreported on January 18, 1920, women “have begun a determined fight to prevent the passage by the New York State Legislature of three new labor measures and for the repeal of two laws limiting hours of employment.”

The Equal Opportunity League

“So-called welfare legislation is not asked for or wanted by real working women.”The Women’s Equal Opportunity League, centered mostly in New York, represented 20,000 working women through funding from various organizations. They demanded the right to choose the most favorable hours of employment and to choose the nature of that employment. These were harmed by existing legislation and pending laws concerning the minimum wage, the 8-hour work day, and the factory bill demanding special (and more expensive) accommodation for women workers.

The New York Times interviewed Maude Terryberry of New York. The “Lockwood transportation law,” which limited women’s rights to work as ticket takers, caused her to lose her job. Under this law, women conductors, ticket choppers, ticket sellers, and subway guards could work only nine consecutive hours, and they could not work after 10pm or before 6am. Ms. Terryberry’s life was wrecked by this law.

She told the Times:

I am not asking for sympathy but for an equal right with men to earn my own living in the best way open and under the most favorable conditions that I could choose for myself… In September I lost my job on the subway line. Not until November did I succeed in finding other work. As a ticket seller I made an average of $33 a week. The next work I could get was as an extra saleswoman in a department store at $15 per week. I do miss that $18 a week and I do hate to start over now and then on the wearying and sometimes humiliating task of finding a new job. There are thousands of other women like myself who must be self-supporting and are finding similar difficulties in making a living.

The Times also quotes a Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt:

It is more important than any other consideration at this time that every human being who is obliged to earn his or her own living should have absolute freedom to find any employment which seems suitable and profitable without discrimination or restrictions of any kind. Life is hard enough at best in these days of mounting rents and high costs of living and the liberty and right to labor is as much a woman’s as a man’s just as a fair wage is no more a man’s than a woman’s privilege.

And here is what the Equal Opportunity League itself had to say:

So-called welfare legislation is not asked for or wanted by real working women. These welfare bills are drafted by self-styled social uplifters who assert that working women do not know enough to protect themselves, aided by a few women who once worked but who are now living off the labor movement.

Are Women people? Women are no longer the wards of the State and a law that is unconstitutional for a man voter is equally unconstitutional for a woman voter…

Men’s labor unions have always opposed legislation restricting their hours of labor or regulating their wage scales. Men know that these matters can be adjusted satisfactorily only by the unions themselves.

Working at night is no more injurious than working in the daytime. Many women prefer to work at night because the wage is higher, opportunities for advancement greater, and women with children can enjoy being with their children after school hours in the day time.

Making it a crime to employ women even five minutes after the eight-hour day kills the principle of equal pay for equal work.

What kinds of bills were before the legislature? One would limit working hours per week to 48. The League said: “If the pending bill becomes a law women will be ousted from all classes of work where the wage is high enough to attract men, and they will be forced back into the canneries, textile mills, domestic service, and kindred drudgery.”

Another bill would impose a women’s-only minimum wage. The League said: “such a bill, affecting women only, while purporting to be for their benefit, would really be a serious handicap to them in competing with men workers for desirable positions.”

Yet another bill would apply to women working service professions such as secretaries, accountants, librarians, file clerks, and executives. It would limit their work to 9 hours a day. The League said that this bill would cause women to “be replaced by men” and thereby “prevent women from rising to executive positions and greatly retard their progress generally.”

The League concludes:

If women are to hold the political quality granted by the suffrage amendment, they must insist on having industrial equality as well. It must be made clear that women do not relish – do not need – the so-called protection afforded by discriminative legislation which stunts and dwarfs – bars – woman’s progress, regardless of her ability and capacity for the fullest service, and it must be made clear that women refuse to be handicapped by laws which so restrict, hedge in and limit the scope of their activities to employers of labor.

In conclusion, cheers to the Equal Opportunity League, sadly defunct today. This was an organization that saw government for exactly what it was. It also understood that the interests of women were advanced by the dignity of freedom, not the demeaning dependence and institutionalized misogyny of state paternalism.

Gold, we need it back bad. We’ve had 45 years of it absent from our monetary decisions and the effects have been no short of disastrous . We need a stable currency if the nation or even individuals are to prosper in society. We can not continue to use worthless bank notes from the federal reserve when they simply can be printed in massive QE. However as much as we need the Gold Standard returned, we also must realize this will not come about overnight. As much as pragmatism as seen as a cop out. For monetary policy it is required. The absolute goal is to return to a 100% gold dollar backed by no government and instead created by private banking/minting institutions. There are many advantages to a Gold Dollar, the first being that since gold is difficult to mine and then transport and then produce into coinage, it can not be endlessly produced like federal bank notes. Leading to a decrease in rapid unhealthy inflation, like we have in our current situation with the endless printing of paper notes. This is what causes unstable currency and eventual crashes like 08. With a 100% Gold Dollar the currency will remain stable, seeing as money minting is a difficult time consuming process, and what bank wants to run out of gold to lend out Another advantage is the demand for gold. Gold has always been sought out by humans. It’s not a new phenomenon. Gold is a metal that has never lost its battle for keeping man’s eyes interested. From jewelry to a symbol of wealth, from the sarcophaguses of Egypt to the large Buddha in Thailand, to the gold leaf on The Statue of Liberty. The demand will surely never cease as long as humans keep staring at it. The idea that gold is not money is severely misused. Seeing as money is whatever one wants to use as a commodity for exchange. We see people who still believe in the usage as gold as a safeguard against economic hardship. When gold was first started to be used with silver as the american dollar; according to The Coinage Act of 1792 0.55OZ or 17 grams of gold, were the standard of the “American eagle” (American gold dollar) with it going to 0.05 by 1832. The Gold standard Act in 1900 forced gold to become the representation of the dollar at 0.05 oz of gold.

The ability to return to sound monetary policy will not be an easy quest. It will be a long uphill battle. The very first thing that must occur is to Audit The Federal Reserve, exposing the corruption for what it is, and hold them to 100% transparency. Let the public be informed about the deceit. As soon as people can see the hidden secrecy they can learn the evils of central banking. The second thing is to repeal the Legal Tender Act of 1862, which allowed treasury secretaries full control over what money the united states used and made all other forms of currency illegal. If other commodities like gold silver bitcoin or other forms of cryptocurrency allow them to do so. It leads to competing currencies which allow for competition in interest rates. Leading to a lot more investing. Which is good for banks. When banks can compete with The Fed, the banks will eventually outcompete the central bank making it obsolete, after the introduction as bitcoin, gold, silver etc as money. Once The Fed is seen as obsolete, the congress will be able to conduct business and draft a bill to end The Fed seeing how useless it has become.

One issue with once a 100% gold standard is conducted is “how can banks be trusted to run the economy without any central oversight. The answer is simple, no one wants incoming problems. Banks will try to honestly value interest rates and only hold as much gold as they are capable of. Since carrying around 500 gold coins could be an issue banks could issue a gold note saying “this note is worth x ounces of gold.” Then could be used in a transaction and the note could be directed to a bank that accepts other notes or to the original bank and the bank could give out the note again. Now this is not a perfect balance, some banks will still loan out more banknotes for the gold they have in their vaults. Which can happen if a bank is irresponsible, if so they will be responsible to pay out to their customers and go under where a new bank can rise up and take its place. Some say that credit cards and debit cards would cease to exist, which is a ludicrous statement. Cards would act the same as they do now, but you could have your cards have silver or gold linked to your bank account. Bitcoin wallets would work much the same way. You’ll be charged for your purchase and your bank will send a statement and you’ll balance your checkbook. Just instead of investing Federal Reserve notes it will be gold and silver coins. While the road to adjusting from Federal Reserve notes will be bumpy trying to figure out interest rates with brand new currency, gold silver and bitcoin are already closely monitored and their value fluctuates. With this we can measure the value from the preexisting federal reserve amounts and go from there.

While the transition to gold won’t be easy or even a short road. It will be well worth it when sound money, real hard money, makes a reappearance and leads us to a stable currency and a stable economy.

“We conclude, therefore, that determining the supply of money, like all other goods, is best left to the free market. Aside from the general moral and economic advantages of freedom over coercion, no dictated quantity of money will do the work better, and the free market will set the production of gold in accordance with its relative ability to satisfy the needs of consumers, as compared with all other productive goods” ~ Murray Rothbard.

James Comey, the director of the FBI, has been championed by the media for his impartial character. His refusal to recommend indictment for Hillary Clinton seems far from politically impartial, rather he appears to be entrenched in politics. Hillary claimed that she sent no classified emails, but that was a bald-faced lie. James Comey even said, “110 emails were determined to have classified information”. It appears we now have two standards for the law because some are held above the law. Elite politicians and bureaucrats are never prosecuted for violating laws, while the same privilege is not given to other Americans.

The Justice Department, under Obama’s control, seems systematically corrupt. Hillary Clinton is not the only high-profile offender that has escaped prosecution from the Justice Department. James Clapper committed perjury by lying under oath about the NSA program. He blatantly lied to the American public by claiming the NSA does not collect data on millions of people. Similarly, Lois Learner received a cushy retirement pension and was not criminally prosecuted by the Justice Department. Learner unlawfully targeted conservative political groups because she wanted to crack down on any political opposition to Obama.

Hillary, Learner and Clapper all should have been charged with crimes. All three deserve a prison sentence, but the historical precedent set by the Justice Department has a much greater importance. This begs the questions: will all high profile politicians in the future have practical immunity from prosecution? Hillary’s ability to abuse her power with success could influence other politicians to follow suit. In the future, more politicians might form foundations that take bribes from foreign country, if they know the law does not apply to them. All politicians that break the law should be prosecuted to protect the integrity of our Republic.

If you read or watch progressive-leftist pundits at all, you know they are not fans of Donald Trump. They exert some effort arguing the merits of Trump’s general policy positions, but progressives spend much of their time talking and writing about Trump’s demeanor, his character, or his personal life. They also take every opportunity they can to claim Trump is “hateful”. Sometimes they beat around the bush, or they might just come out and say it.

Progressives say he hates Mexicans, women, Muslims, etc. – and I don’t necessarily disagree. He’s definitely had distasteful things to say about many different groups of people. Unfortunately, the warnings about Trump’s true colors will be ignored – ignored because of progressives.

One of the reasons progressives constantly bring up Trump’s “hateful” rhetoric is so they can keep people on the fence about Trump from eventually moving to his side. It’s not to dissuade his supporters from continuing their support for him. They’re not going anywhere, and most of them don’t care, frankly, what progressives have to say about Trump. Progressives are hell-bent on preventing those potential voters in the middle who aren’t sure who they’re going to support in November from voting for Trump.

One of the most common ways they do that is to paint Trump as a hateful person. They may not use the word “hateful”, but they will use some term that make their opponents out to be hateful. The term could be “racist”, “bigot”, “homophobe”, “Islamophobe”, “anti-Semite”, “xenophobe”, “misogynist”, “sexist”, “fear-monger”, “privileged”, and on and on.

Calling your political opponent out as being some form of a bigot is not a new tactic for progressive. They have spent decades calling people they disagree with hateful. When a progressive has a policy difference with someone, the progressive will not exhaust himself using logic or evidence to make his argument. He may give one or two points here and there, but if those points are countered, the progressive will inevitably resort to calling his opponent “hateful”. Progressives use these terms to stifle their opponents when they know they can’t win an argument using evidence or logic.

If, for example, over the course of a discussion, a person makes a claim about poverty that the progressive doesn’t like, then the easy and common answer for the progressive is to say to his opponent “You hate the poor!” Whether the progressive’s opponent’s statement about poverty was hateful or not does not matter to the progressive. If he cannot offer a reasonable rebuttal (and usually the progressive cannot), then his first “out” is to call his fellow debater “hateful”.

If the discussion is about race and a comment is made that the progressive doesn’t like, the point isn’t rebutted with logic or statistics or another type of evidence – especially if the claim that was originally made gave evidence or used logic. The claim is simply dismissed by the progressive by telling their opponent to “check her privilege” or by calling her a racist whether a bigoted judgement had been made regarding race or not.

If a man makes a point about statistical differences (not an opinion, but a claim based on facts) in an argument regarding men and women in general, and the progressive does not like it, the progressive will not make a logical appeal or offer some other statistics as evidence to support an opposing claim. Instead, the man will be called a sexist or misogynist.

These tactics have been a way for the progressive to defeat his opponent without using logic or evidence to support his claims (often because there is no real evidence to support his claims or they are not logical). In the case of Donald Trump, we can see how this tactic has watered down what should be a very insidious charge. We all should make it a habit to call out people when their statements are bigoted – rooted in a prejudicial bias rather than in sound reasoning. But that’s not what progressives do.

With Trump, we have someone who could easily fit the bill of an ignorant bigot. But when progressives try to use that label, we see they have spent so long calling non-hateful people “hateful”, that when they try to attach that stigma to someone like Trump, it has lost all of its power because of its decades-long overuse and abuse.

Progressives have been like the boy crying wolf for a bit of deviant fun. They cry “bigotry”, not for deviant fun, but in an attempt to discredit opposing points of view. But just like the boy in the fable, when the wolf becomes a very real and present threat, his cries are ignored to the detriment of the flock due to earlier erroneous claims. Similarly, the progressive’s cries of bigotry are going unheeded. Fewer and fewer people trust them to tell the truth, so on the off chance they get something right, it is ignored. Ignored when it should be heeded the most. Progressives have made the term “bigot” so ubiquitous, it is simply ignored when utilized – even in the rare instances when they apply it fairly.

By Nicholas JamesIn 2016, when the Democrats are running a liar and the Republicans are running a lifelong Democrat, it didn’t seem like a tall order for the Libertarians to gain some traction and share their message. Unfortunately, for those of us who espouse real libertarian values, the Libertarian party chose to run a right of center democrat. In a strange twist, in an election cycle fraught with oddities, Libertarians have chosen a man fundamentally incapable of spreading the message of freedom, and it turns out Donald Trump may be the greater advocate of liberty. On a number of issues, from The Supreme Court to Hillary Clinton; from budgeting to military intervention; and from freedom of association to freedom of speech it would seem Donald Trump better understands the threats to our liberty, and is more prepared to combat those threats, than Gary Johnson.

From the beginning: The Supreme Court: Donald Trump’s list of jurists, who would be likely nominees to the Supreme Court during his presidency, has received vast praise among conservatives for being similar in philosophy to Justice Scalia; originalists who wouldn’t treat the Constitution as advice to be acted on through a modern prism. Trump has consistently said, whether they are from that list, or not, he would want to nominate originalist judges who would interpret the Constitution’s original meaning and not legislate from the bench. Gary Johnson, on the other hand has had very little to say on this topic other than he would defer to Bill Weld. It’s worth repeating: he would refer to his gun grabbing running mates judgement. Bill Weld has held out Judge Garland and Justice Breyer as examples of the type of jurists he would recommend for the highest bench in the country. Justice Breyer is on record confirming his conviction that the Constitution is a living document that needs to change whimsically, with the times. Judge Garland’s record would indicate he believes in the same vein, he often issues judgments that go beyond what is or isn’t Constitutional. Another person who is very fond of both of these men, and worse: Justice Ginsberg, is “lifelong friend” of Bill Weld and a “wonderful public servant,” by Johnson’s assessment: Hillary Clinton.

Regardless of any subjective opinion of Hillary Clinton, she has objectively been shown to be a dangerous, self-serving liar. If you didn’t know it before, after the last few months, you must know now. It should be clear to all, that she has no grounding principles apart from what the polls say are popular (even Barack Obama recognized this); that she used an unauthorized home brew server to intentionally remove state secrets from a secure server; that she (as well as our government, if she is elected) would be for sale via the Clinton Foundation; and that she has no respect for the Constitution, or the rule of law. This is the woman that Bill Weld and Gary Johnson refuse to criticize. They have no shortage of superior snorts and crass comments for Donald Trump but, asked point blank, neither has a single criticism of this wonderful public servant and lifelong friend. Donald Trump, political motivations notwithstanding, has aggressively pointed out how careless and corrupt Hillary Clinton has been throughout her public life. I will cede the point that Donald Trump has been very complimentary, even friendly, with the Clintons in the past but now, when it matters, he is taking a stand.To be clear: this might be completely political, but Hillary Clinton represents a unique threat to the republic and it doesn’t matter how she is stopped, as long as she’s stopped, and Gary Johnson refuses to offer even the most basic arguments against her.

Gary Johnson has not been shy about his assertion that 20% of government can be cut, at a starting point, and he’s right. I believe the government could start with 20% cuts and likely go much further, if we only funded those things specifically authorized by the Constitution. Although I agree with Johnson on this point, this isn’t how you budget. If you ask someone what they can do without, the answer will always be no; whether it’s your child and his allowance or your Congressman and his pork projects, there will never be any room for cuts. This is where pragmatism trumps principle. Yes, in principle these cuts should be made but that is not how you go about it: Donald Trump, however is on to a good solution. This is one point where Trump’s failure to unite the GOP is stingingly painful, he has recently gone on record to suggest he would be an advocate for zero base budgeting, one of the strongest pillars of Carly Fiorina’s Presidential campaign. The specific difference here is that if you ask someone to justify every dollar they spend, instead of asking them what they can cut, they’ll come up short. Although this is the lowest of hanging fruit I feel like it would be hard for the DoD to justify funding of bird watching; that is just one example of how our government wastes tax dollars on things it isn’t authorized to do and things no one wants or needs. If the government wants to waste our tax dollars we should make them affirmatively ask for and justify it every single year, not just ask them when and where we can cut.

During Gary Johnson’s campaign he has routinely come out in favor of humanitarian wars. I can’t imagine a worse use of our military than being the world police. The rest of the world already accuses us of this, and it is an indictment of our behavior, not an endorsement. Although Donald Trump has often fallen short of advocating responsible, or even ethical, use of our military, he has consistently advocated for a world wide pull back from places where we don’t have tangible interests. Donald Trump, for all his shortcomings, and there are many, understands that, if he were elected he’d be President of the United States, not President of the World; something that none of his three opponents seem to understand or appreciate.

Finally we come to our most important topic, the topic that should be an easy home run for every libertarian (big L or little L): freedom of speech and association. This is a horrifyingly jarring juxtaposition for many reasons, not least of which: Gary Johnson is the nominee to, what is supposed to be, the party of liberty. Donald Trump, a lifelong Democrat is the champion of liberty in the category against the nominee of the Libertarian party. I have said, from the beginning of his campaign and whether it is his intention or not, Donald Trump has done more for free speech in this country than anyone in the last 50 years. His “no apologies, call it like he sees it” style has empowered a generation of young people to speak out against those things that we’ve been indoctrinated to believe are unassailable. As a nation, we’ve long thought that we have certain rights that can never be taken from us, we tend to think of these as enshrined in the Constitution; particularly The Bill of Rights. These are the rights most severely under attack by leftist and “Social Justice Warriors.” Hillary Clinton said that the Second Amendment, like all of our rights, are subject to “reasonable” regulation; make no mistake, they’ll come for our guns first but our speech is next; it’s already begun on campuses across the nation. This is where Gary Johnson crosses the line to become an unforgivable charlatan. Gary Johnson does not support religious freedom laws, that grant people a limited freedom of association. If this were a law supported by the left it would be renamed freedom of speech restoration (or something equally inspiring) but the right is woefully bereft of rhetorical faculty. Gary Johnson, now infamously, told Austin Petersen, in the first ever nationally televised Libertarian debate, that he thought a Jewish baker should be required to bake a Nazi cake. After a great deal of backlash and criticism he has slightly amended this assertion to but stands steadfastly beside the belief that it is the government’s job to regulate morality and stamp out bigotry and discrimination. To be clear: no decent person supports bigotry or discrimination but, our first amendment rights aren’t for those thoughts that are pleasant, they are for those things that are unpopular, or even immoral. Donald Trump has enthusiastically endorsed religious freedom laws and even chose a running mate with a reputation for championing these causes, although he has proven a failure in his most prominent endeavor to this end.

Although this set of opinions isn’t an endorsement of Donald Trump, it is certainly an argument in his favor. My position has long been that I will support Gary Johnson as the nominee of a party that espouses the values that most closely mirror my own but, I will not endorse Gary Johnson. Gary Johnson is a fraud and, at best, a failed Republican. He is a politician running on a set of principles that he, at best doesn’t believe in and, at worst is positively aggressive towards. On the opposite side of the coin, Donald Trump is a candidate whose principles are impossible to nail down. He is a lifelong Democrat with historical positions that I find abhorrent however, he is the only person at least saying the right things about the most important challenges facing our country. In a year of unbelievably bad choices, where the Green Party has shown itself to be the only party with any principle, Donald Trump might be the best option of several bad to dangerous options.

Obama ran as the hope and change candidate, but nothing about Washington changed. Simply put, Obama is a partisan hack and a typical politician. Trump would not fundamentally change Washington or make “America Great Again” No matter who the next president is, the Constitution will erode and the government will continue to grow. Trump does not “tell like it is” and he is actually the king of flip flopping. He has no back bone ideologically and is willing to change any position to get elected. Trump is a typical politician, not a leader.

2. Spending Will Increase

Trump claims he will cut the budget, but he not outlined any specific cuts. In fact, he has promised to increase spending in numerous areas. An estimated 380 billion to 620 billion will be added to the debt, if Trump follows through with his deportation plan. He has promised to spend hundreds of billions on rebuilding our military and nuclear weapons program. Additionally, he would spend more money on the Veterans Administration and he refuses to make any cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Just like Obama, spending would increase under a Trump presidency.

3. Foreign Policy

Obama ran as the “antiwar” candidate in the 2008 presidential election. The United States thought his intelligence and charisma would promote diplomacy instead of war. Sadly, Obama has doubled down on the failed neoconservative foreign policy of George Bush. In fact, Obama has bombed more countries than Bush and has expanded the drone assassination program. Intervening against secular dictators in Libya and Syria has allowed radical Sunni groups (ISIS) to grow in prominence. Trump has railed against the Iraq War, but he is inclined to show military force. It is easier for Trump to just say, “I will bomb the shit out of them”. Trump would not show restraint in the Middle East because he is politically incapable of selling diplomacy to the American public. Just like Obama, Trump would keep the US entrenched in conflict throughout the Middle East.

With a plan to impractically build a wall on Mexico’s border with them paying for it, temporarily banning Muslim immigration, and a demeanor that doesn’t make for good first impressions, Donald Trump has been casted as a silly, sporadic, loose cannon by most mainstream media and average millennials that only read the headlines. While almost all of the spotlight has been placed on Trump, Hillary’s destructive foreign policy and countless scandals that could possibly include multiple assassinations has not received nearly enough attention in the mainstream media and can have ramifications far worse for America and humanity than anything Trump has presented us with so far.

Even with ignoring the email scandal and how FBI Director James Comey basically said that Hillary could have been indicted if she was literally anyone else (so much for being equal in the eyes of the law), the content of the emails on her private server tell us a lot more about what her behavior would be as Commander-in-Chief. The disastrous regime change project in Libya is played out in these emails, as well as the promotion of sectarian war in Syria for Israel’s benefit and using the internet in Syria to try and alter the hearts and minds of the people.

Likewise, Hillary Clinton has suggested the use of a “No-Fly Zone” in Syria, just like the one that resulted in the destruction of Libya, in order to protect Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists in order to keep conflict in the country ongoing. The kicker with a Syria “No-Fly Zone”, is that the U.S. would have to shoot down Russian planes to enforce it, creating a World War 3 escalation.

Furthermore, Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has indicated that he has emails that prove that Hillary Clinton funneled weapons and fighters from Libya to Syria via Turkey to groups that include Al-Qaeda affiliates and ISIS. This is something that she denied knowing anything about when Rand Paul asked specifically about it in a Benghazi hearing (another scandal?).

Curiously, another scandal that receives the least attention but often gets poked at outside of mainstream media is the fact that so many people that are affiliated with Hillary and may have pertinent information about her role in previous scandals end up mysteriously dying. This is not to accuse her of murder before due process, but the fact there is so little spotlight or investigation by mainstream journalists on this issue is frightening, because it would likely damage her reputation beyond repair if CNN spent even a day discussing it.

Lastly, Clinton is so dangerous because she is the war candidate, an interventionist globalist who will go at lengths to achieve this goal and fatten her own wallets as well as those who have gotten her to the most important office in the world, no matter the human cost both foreign and American. The actions Hillary Clinton has already taken speak louder, is more dangerous, and practically dwarfs anything Trump has said so far. That wall doesn’t sound so horrible now, does it?

The Impact of The Federal Reserve, Central Banking, and the Absence of Gold Money, and its effects on the economy.

Since the Federal Reserve’s inception, it has had the honor of being the longest operating central bank in the united states history. The federal reserve, abolished the idea of the gold standard. It took the currency away from the minting abilities of congress, and deemed that all money issued by congress to no longer be backed by gold, but by whatever arbitrary number the fed chairman and board of directors decides based off interests rates. Which is the true value of money. How currency backed purely by gold had worked was, each dollar was representative of a single ounce of gold that the government physically existed. With the advent of the fed however, congress had no power to print money at its own discretion. It turned over all power to the federal reserve. The federal reserve was implicated like all central banks are to keep “stability over currency and the economy.” Which is nothing more than short term low interest rates that turn into bubbles. The Fed’s existence has ruined real money backed by gold. Without Gold backed dollars the value of dollar the value and purchasing power is determined by the interest rates that the federal reserve holds low, along with their process of printing money out of thin air (as its not backed by gold since Nixon, the fed can do this is an unlimited fashion.) When the fed prints money it increases the money supply and according to simple laws of supply and demand, the more physical dollars in existence the lower their value becomes, hence the massive inflation we’ve seen. Done believe it well just go play with this Inflation Calculator it shows that inflation is 2000% since 1913. So one dollar in 1913 would be ~$24.31. Which is a ludicrous inflation rate, which would not occur so severely in a gold backed dollar system. This isn’t to say inflation would occur, obviously it would as gold coins would either be added or removed from the economy, but inflation rates of 2000% would not occur. We can also see the problem with a fully fiat currency in the price of gold since 1971. Since 1971 to now the price of gold has gone up steadily year by year (with a few exceptions in the 80s and 90s) from $44.60 in 1971 to $1,060 in 2015. While steeply growing after the financial crash of 2008. Seeing this is a rising indicator people aren’t trustworthy of the worthless fiat money the government has been using. They want precious metals as a security net. Seeing how they have real nearly unchanging value. One ounce of gold is one ounce of gold that becomes very hard to inflate because gold cannot be printed off in unlimited quantities, unlike the paper dollar which can be printed out at will and cause the money supply to increase. While fiat currency can be argued to be flexible to save the economy from depressions, a major issue with a non gold backed currency is debt. When the federal reserve is not required to only print off only as many notes as to how much gold we have, they can print endlessly causing massive debt as the united states government has to borrow the money from the federal reserve. As the debt rises closer and closer to 20 trillion it is reaching unsustainable levels of worthless paper. On a pure gold standard we would not have massive debt because the federal government could only borrow as much in accordance to how much gold is possessed by the government. Another failing issue with how gold has been severely harmed is with many mainstream economists to believe that gold caused the great depression which simply isn’t the case as many world wide prolonged depressions had happened before the great depression and even after Roosevelt left the standard in 1933 the depression continued until after world war two. The depression was actually caused in an unstable inflation of money supply leading to an uneasy boom in the price of capital goods which once exhausted the bubble burst. The gold standard abandonment has done nothing more than give the united states an unstable monetary policy and caused massive inflation while letting The Fed take control over our lives and capital.